


Full House

by dareyoutoread



Category: Revolution (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-01
Updated: 2013-08-16
Packaged: 2017-12-22 01:24:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 11,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/907241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dareyoutoread/pseuds/dareyoutoread
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Changed the summary, since the fic's done and it's no longer a surprise. New summary: Rachel, Miles, and Bass play strip poker. 'Nuff said.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [buttercups3](https://archiveofourown.org/users/buttercups3/gifts).



> Because my best Rev buddy, buttercups3, actually knew how to play euchre, I present this fic.
> 
> First chapter's just a teaser. Kind of literally.

_Six years after the Blackout…_

No one _likes_ winter – not _real_ winter, with wind that blows through your skin and clothing like they’re not there. This kind of wind, Miles figures, as he futilely flexes his hands on the reins and tries to compress his whole body around his stomach for warmth – screw looking tough for the men; every one of them has his head down anyway – sucked before the Blackout.

Now, it kills.

Three hours later, they finally find an abandoned strip mall to act as a windbreak for their tents. It’s still cold as fuck inside the flapping canvas, but one of the new recruits – a kid from Minnesota who’s “eighteen” like Miles is eighty – drags in wood and gets a fire going while Miles, Bass, and Jeremy “compile statistics.” That’s what Jeremy calls it, anyway. To Miles, it always sounds more like “listing the ways their asses are being handed to them.”

They finish their depressing task an hour later, just as the feeling is finally starting to return to Miles’ fingers, and Jeremy looks across the table at his and Bass’s exhausted faces. True to form, he opens his mouth to try to cheer them up. 

“Anyone up for a game of cards?”

Bass shifts in his seat to get closer to the fire, stripping off one boot and flexing his toes like he’s surprised they’re still there. Miles knows where this is going, but Bass takes the bait anyway. “What’re we playing?”

Jeremy lights up like a kid whose workaholic dad just agreed to play catch. He’s already pulling a damp pack of cards out of his pocket – every damn stitch of clothing they own is covered in melting snow – as he hesitates (here it comes), then says, hopefully, “Poker?”

“ _No_ ,” Miles and Bass snap in such perfect unison it takes Jeremy a second to realize they’ve both spoken. When he does, his face falls.

“Fine,” he mutters, and Miles can never figure out if he’s more upset that they won’t play his game or that neither of them has ever told him _why_ they won’t. Jeremy pouts for a second, then mumbles, “Rummy,” and deals out the cards. 

It’s a one-side-warm-at-a-time night, and they all drag their bedrolls as close to the fire as they dare – which, in Bass’s case, is close enough Miles worries he’ll torch himself in his sleep – and after Jeremy drops off, Bass half-mumbles in a breathy voice, “Full House,” then subsides into a fit of giggles. Miles head-butts him – he’s only about two inches away, but it’s just too cold to take a hand out from under the blankets to hit him with.

“Shut up, asshole.”

Bass just snickers. Loudly. “Prude.” 

“Exhibitionist." 

“Pssh. You’re just afraid if we play again, you’ll – ”

But Miles doesn’t hear the rest of Bass’s sentence, because he’s already asleep.

And he’d planned on it being an escape, but since his memories never know enough to leave his dreams alone, he instead finds himself dreaming of the last time, sixteen years earlier, that he and Bass had played poker.

Strip poker.

…with Rachel Matheson.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Un-beta'd crack. I have no excuse. Now I'm just running these characters through situations I think are funny. lol. Nobody stop me yet, though, or you'll miss strip poker!

 

_Ten years before the Blackout…_

_Miles_

Standing on the doorstep of his brother’s ostentatiously large house – what college student owns a house, really? – Miles tugs his jacket tighter around his ribs and bangs on the door again, harder.

“Ben! It’s fucking freezing out here!”

He’s already pissed to be spending his leave here, instead of with Bass’s family, but Gail had surprised the girls with a Christmas vacation to Disney World, leaving him and Bass essentially homeless for their two weeks off.  So it was stay at base or bunk in Ben’s finished basement, and Bass had voted for Ben’s. 

Beside him, Bass grins cheerfully and suggests, “Tell him if it gets any colder, my balls are going to retract inside my body, and his new girlfriend’ll have to coax ‘em back out.”  He has to practically shout into the wind to make himself heard, and when Miles does figure out what his best friend said, he sort of wishes that he hadn’t.

Before he can muster a reply, the door finally swings open and Ben – looking more irritated than apologetic – ushers them inside. They drop their bags, peel out of their snow-soaked jackets, and pull off boots that are already leaving expanding puddles on Ben’s pastel tiled floor. As soon as they’re fit for entry into the house, Ben brushes right past the “hello,” and skips straight to:

“Rachel is in the kitchen. I’d appreciate it if you two would leave the f-bombs and sex jokes for your Marine friends and behave like gentlemen around her. She’s smart – ”

Bass shoots Miles a look which Miles knows is because he can’t actually mouth the word “ugly” in front of Ben.

“ – and sweet, and I’d like to keep her that way.”

Well, that probably leaves about fifteen minutes before Bass gets them thrown out. If he’s trying hard to be good. But disagreeing with Ben is like hitting someone with a closed fist – momentarily satisfying, but ultimately too much trouble to be fun – so Miles just grunts a quick, “Yeah,” and he and Bass grab their bags and head for the basement.

Ben’s finished basement contains a (covered) pool table – Ben never plays – a (mostly empty) liquor cabinet – Ben rarely drinks anything other than wine – two couches, and a card table with three matching chairs. The table is from their Dad’s house, and the fourth chair has been missing for longer than Miles can remember, and the rest of this stuff seems like it must have been here since before Ben had bought the house. Leftovers from a guy who knew how to have fun.

Once they’re alone, Bass throws his bag on the floor and himself on one of the couches to test its springiness. He bounces up and down like a four-year-old for a second, then looks at Miles, who’s digging in his own bag for a clean shirt. “Look – I know your bro’s a killjoy, but don’t forget – he’s feeding us Christmas dinner. At least be civil till after we get our turkey?”

“Fine. If you can keep yourself from chatting up Ben’s girlfriend, I’ll be civil. Deal?”  Unable to find the shirt he’s looking for, Miles dumps the bag out on his sofa.

Bass rolls his eyes. “Shit, man. Here.” He unzips his bag, pulls out a blue collared shirt, and tosses it to Miles. “I brought a couple. Since, you know, your idea of dressing up for dinner is putting on clean socks.”

Miles scowls, but strips off his own dirty long-sleeve and puts on the button-up. He’s glad there’s not a mirror down here, because he’s pretty sure he’s not pulling this look off as well as Bass does.

Bass pulls a second neatly-folded shirt from the bag and changes his own clothes, which somehow manages to make him look like he’s also had a shower. Miles runs a hand through his own stringy hair to straighten it a little. Fuck it. Good enough. It’s just Ben, Bass, and Ben’s probably ugly girlfriend, so it’s not like there’s anyone to impress. If he’s lucky, most of dinner will consist of him shoveling food down his throat so he and Ben don’t have to awkwardly pretend they care about or understand what the other one does.

He and Bass trundle upstairs and sit at the table next to one another, and Bass is bored and already making a teepee with his fork, knife, and spoon by the time Ben appears from the kitchen with a girl behind him. Miles looks up –

 – right into a pair of blue eyes that hit him like a shock of ice water. His insides go cold and hot and cold all over again and he actually has to fucking blink and look away before he can get his brain to jumpstart out of its induced stupor.  Oh, _shit._

“ – is Rachel,” Ben is saying, and Bass actually tugs on his sleeve to get him to stand, which he does, pasting on a smile and trying not to let his eyes linger on the girl’s wavy blonde hair and wide, welcoming smile.

He manages to avoid shaking her hand – for once, he’s thankful for Bass barging in front of him and flirting in his painfully-obvious-but-still-somehow-charming-to-women way. She gives Bass a polite smile and a vaguely amused look that says Ben has already warned her about him. Then she turns those eyes on Miles.  Suddenly, he wishes he’d buttoned up his shirt a little farther. Like, over his whole head. 

“Little brother Matheson,” she says, like it’s a compliment. “I’m so glad you both made it. Ben talks about you all the time.”

“Yes,” Ben cuts in, putting a hand on Rachel’s back to direct her to her chair, “I talk about how you should come home more often. And maybe take the army – ”

“Marines,” Miles corrects automatically.

“ – up on all that schooling they offered you.”

Miles can feel Bass tense in the chair next to him. Well, he knows where this is going. Miles wants to kick himself for promising to be civil until after turkey.

He swallows a retort along with a huge bite of mashed potatoes. This is how dinner goes in the Matheson household. A few biting comments, silence punctuated by chewing, and then a whole lot of yelling.

But then Rachel interjects. “Ben tells me you two know how to play euchre.”

Bass slaps a hand on the table hard enough to rattle the dishes and grins through a mouthful of potatoes. “Best Midwestern card game ever invented. You’re looking at the original Left and Right Bowers right here,” he jokes, gesturing at himself and Miles. “We’ve never lost a game.”

“That’s because they read each other’s minds. Which is cheating.” Ben actually smiles – though it’s mostly at Rachel – and Miles feels his shoulders relax a little.

“We should play after dinner!” Rachel proclaims like this is the best idea anyone’s ever had.

Bass raises a challenging eyebrow. “Oh, we’ll be happy to hand you your ass –uh, cards back, when you lose,” he redirects, glancing at Ben.

They win by a landslide, which pisses off Ben but doesn’t seem to bother Rachel in the slightest, and by the end of the game, Miles can actually look Ben’s girlfriend in the eyes and not feel like his heart’s about to climb out between his teeth. He chalks his initial reaction up to too many months on base without a girlfriend of his own, and by the time he and Bass head down to the basement, he’s actually managed to laugh at a few of Ben’s science jokes and – God forbid – _enjoy_ his brother’s company for once. Rachel seems to be a good thing for Ben. She’s definitely a good thing for Miles and Ben.

…

_Rachel_

Ben’s little brother is a puzzle, and Rachel _loves_ puzzles. He’d given her the strangest look when she’d said hello, like he was lost in the middle of a desert and she was the only oasis, but since then, he’s been quiet – as far as she can tell, he spends about half the time letting Bass speak for him, and the other half speaking _to_ Bass – and not at all what she expected from Ben’s descriptions. He doesn’t seem like a deadbeat, and with that much lean muscle packed on that skinny frame, he’s got to be a pretty hard worker. But the thing that had surprised her most was the sharpness in Miles’ brown eyes. This much is obvious to Rachel: Miles is much, much smarter than Ben has given him credit for.

Bass, on the other hand, she can explain in one phrase: "attention whore." She grins and rolls her eyes, recalling his practically nonstop commentary during their game. What a pair, those two. It makes her vaguely envious to watch them. She’s never had a friendship that close, and whatever Ben says, it’s obvious to her that Bass is good for Miles, and vice versa. They’re certainly a killer card-playing team…

...

_Miles_

He and Bass are five days into their two-week stay when Rachel walks in on him in the shower. In her defense, it’s actually Ben’s shower, in Ben’s bedroom, but it’s also the only one with consistent hot water, so Miles has taken to sneaking in when Ben is out.

He’s finished rinsing his hair and is just letting the scalding water ripple over his back when the shower door slides back and a half-naked Rachel backpedals so fast she trips over the bath mat.

Thankfully, Basic has greatly improved his reaction time when surprised, because Miles manages to catch her by the arm and probably save her cracking open her skull on the sink.

Of course, now, he’s standing six inches from her, dripping wet and naked, feeling her pulse pound under his fingers. Shit.

“Shit! Fuck! Oh my God, fuck, I’m so sorry; I thought you were Ben.” Rachel pulls her towel up higher (and he grins inside but keeps it off his face, because she swears like a Marine), flushing as Miles slowly lets go of her arm. (His fingers leave water droplet tracks, and he briefly thinks that he could feel that skin all day.) 

She steps back quickly, apologizing again, then disappears out the door in a flash of white towel and blonde curls and just a hint of perfectly curved ass.

Miles has to crank the shower all the way to cold for the next ten minutes.

…

_Rachel_

Oh, God. She has never been more embarrassed in her life. Rachel’s brain freezes on “mortified,” then suddenly whirs back into motion as she realizes that Ben’s little brother is standing close enough for her to smell his shampoo, one hundred percent naked, gripping her arm with one dripping hand. The muscles in his wrist tense and release as he helps her find her balance, then – slowly – lets her go.

Her mouth must be on autopilot. She hears herself apologizing profusely to Miles while her eyes track – without her permission – down his chest (she could trail her fingers down that hair all the way to – _fuck_ , she has to get out of here; it’s like her eyes are magnetized). She manages to turn quickly away before she really gets a good look, and bolts out the door as with as much speed and dignity as she can manage.

Which isn’t much.

…

_Bass_

Miles had, of course, told Bass about the episode in the shower, and Bass had laughed his ass off, because hey, it was hysterical.  He’d taken every opportunity over the last four days as well to make Miles think he was about to bring up the subject to Ben, and had thereby managed to work Miles into a kind of jumpy frenzy that had culminated in Bass getting punched in the nose. 

Totally worth it, though.

He actually _does_ brought up the subject to Rachel on the ninth day of their stay, when Miles is sleeping in, Ben has gone back to school (apparently, his program starts a week earlier than Rachel’s), and Rachel and Bass are taking down Ben’s Christmas tree for him.

“Miles is a lazy ass,” Bass mutters, boxing the thousandth shiny glass ball and catching his fingers on the ornament hook. And then, his only excuse being that he’s bored as hell, he says, “Hey, heard you saw him naked. So be honest: Which one of us is more ripped? Me, right? He’s built like a fence rail.”

He’s waiting for Rachel to turn as red as the tinsel she’s re-wrapping, but instead, for a moment, she acts like she hasn’t heard him at all. Then she turns, slowly, and locks Bass with her piercing blue gaze. He feels his heart rate jump a little despite himself. Rachel’s not really his type, but she has fucking incredible eyes.

Raising an eyebrow, she smiles oh-so-politely and says, seriously, “Sorry; I can’t render a scientific analysis without all the data.”

And Bass laughs, because she’s joking – of course she’s joking – and because apparently she’s (almost) as snarky as he is.

...Also, laughing about it keeps him from opening his mouth (or his shirt) and offering her all the data her instruments can handle. Holy hell, science is a godawful metaphor for sex. Never again. If Ben uses that shit, it's a wonder he ever gets laid. Though apparently, he's getting laid by _Rachel_ , so he's got to be doing something right...  

Bass scrubs a hand through his hair, snagging his fingers in the curls, and turns back to the tree. It takes him half an hour to realize he’s looking at Rachel in the reflections on each ornament as he boxes them. 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Holy crap, this is turning into a longer fic than planned. Well, whatever. Here's the beginning of the card game. Again, if you've read this far, you pretty much know the exact level of insanity ahead. Full crazy ahead!

 

They’ve been at Ben’s house for twelve days, and Miles hasn’t gotten into a single shouting match with his brother. It’s more than a record; it’s a miracle.

Actually, _Rachel_ is a miracle. She’s saved him from at least five or six potentially ugly confrontations in the last week alone, and he’s astounded at how easily she does it. A couple of words from her, or a smile and a nudge, and Ben morphs into the best version of his older brother. Hell, he’s actually been _laughing_ with Ben this week, sitting across the couch from him and Rachel and watching Rachel smile as she narrates some misadventure with her lab team that turns out to be both science-y enough for Ben and actually funny enough for Miles.

It’s…pretty nice.

So he’s in a fairly good mood that night as he slouches at Ben’s dilapidated card table, playing a hand of poker against Bass. They can read each other so well, it’s hardly a challenge, and the games mostly fall out based on what cards they actually draw and not on any sort of bluffing strategy, but they both like the game, so they play anyway.

If it were up to Bass, they’d be playing Halo, but they can’t, because Ben’s got a shit TV and no gaming console down here. Plus Bass’d wake the whole house up hollering every time Miles sniped him.

He’s said it to Bass before (he’s said everything to Bass before), but Miles sort of prefers a physical game anyway. He likes the feel of the cards in his hand, and the plastic clatter of the chips against the table. And – truth be told – he likes throwing down a good hand with a dramatic flourish almost as much as Bass does. 

Bass sets his open bottle of beer perilously close to the edge of the table – they’d finally gone out and bought their own beer halfway through last week, when they’d exhausted Ben’s paltry liquor stores – and drops his cards. “Full House!” Miles has shit for cards this hand, so Bass rakes in a couple dozen chips.

Miles is stretching and thinking about whether to get a third (fourth?) beer from the basement fridge when there’s a soft knock from up the stairs.

“Guys?” It’s Rachel. Weird. He thought he'd heard her leave the house a few hours ago.

“Yeah,” Miles grunts, rising fast enough that he bumps the wobbly table and nearly dumps Bass’s beer into his lap.

“Everybody decent?”

Bass cackles. This has become a running joke between the two of them ever since the shower episode: Rachel absolutely refuses to open a door into a room where one of them might be without first asking if they’re clothed. 

“No; we’re having hot gay sex,” Bass shouts up the stairs. 

Rachel cracks the door and peers down. When she finds them obviously both clothed and sitting at the card table, she slips through the door, closing it behind her with a quiet click, and floats down the stairs into their cave.

She’s been crying. He couldn’t see it till she stepped into the light. It’s subtle, and normally he’s crap at that, but Miles has watched Rachel’s expressions often enough in the last twelve days to know that she doesn’t always have that slight puff to her eyelids, or that wavery edge to her smile.

He should probably say something. Of course, if he can’t manage to open his mouth and make words come out soon, he’ll have missed the moment.

Then, suddenly, Rachel asks, “Do you guys have any more beer?” right at the same time Bass says, “Can I get you a beer?” and all of them laugh, and the moment passes.

It’s Miles who actually goes to the fridge and cracks open a beer for Rachel (and two more for Bass and himself). He deposits the beers on the table and waves for Rachel to take the open seat. She’s smiling now, and he cracks a grin back, though he’s not sure what she’s so happy about. 

“Deal you in?” Bass asks, lifting the cards suggestively. Hell, Bass could make slicing up pizza suggestive. 

A glint lights Rachel’s boundless blue eyes. She takes a slow drag from her bottle, throwing her head back so her wave of blonde hair cascades down the back of her chair. “What are we playing for?”

“Chips,” Miles grunts, readjusting his long legs so he doesn’t kick Rachel under the table. “We always come out pretty even, so we got tired of having to dig up cash.”

“Loser buys beer next time, though,” Bass adds. This is important to him, since somehow Miles usually ends up losing the last hand.

Rachel snorts – and Miles bets Ben has never heard _that_ sound – and rolls her eyes. “I’m not buying you two more beer. Ben would have a fit. Not that I’ll be the one buying anyway,” she adds, “but I have principles.”

Miles cracks open his third (or it is actually fourth?) beer and takes a swig. “Well, we don’t have any money, so chips are about it.” Rachel sighs dramatically – God, she’s worse than Bass – but waves her hand in acquiescence, and Bass deals out the cards.

They play a couple of rounds that go pretty much as expected. Bass wins a hand, Miles wins a hand, Miles wins another hand, and then Rachel finally wins one, but just because the two of them had crap cards. After that, Bass wins three more hands, Miles one, and Rachel zero.

Bass is in rare form – okay, honestly, it’s not that rare for him – turning on every ounce of his charm to impress Rachel and offering the occasional snarky pointer on everyone else’s card playing. 

But when, after an hour, he ventures a dig at Rachel about only winning one hand, her blue eyes spark competitively. “Maybe I’m just losing because I’m bored. There aren’t any stakes here.” 

“Sorry;” Bass slurs – and maybe it’s _him_ who’s on his fourth beer, “gave all my money to Miles. He was broke. I’m a nice guy like that, you know. Give you the shirt off my back.”

Rachel laughs, drinks from her bottle – somewhere in that hour, she’d started in on a second beer – and then shrugs and jokes, “Okay, deal. We play the next hand for your shirt.” 

Oh, shit. Miles keeps forgetting she doesn’t know Bass that well yet.

Sure enough, a familiar gleam lights his best friend’s eyes. Well, this’ll be the end of the game.

Bass’s face spreads into his best shit-eating grin. “Oh, you want to make it _really_ interesting?”

“Bass,” Miles intones, warningly.

Bass spreads his hands. “Hey, the lady’s just looking for a chance to collect her data. It’d be cruel to deny her, Miles.”

Miles rolls his eyes, and takes a swig of his beer while he waits for Rachel’s angry reaction. After a second, he looks up from his beer and looks – really looks – at Rachel and Bass. 

They’re facing off across the table, ice-blue eyes locked, and oh, holy hell, there’s a matching impish gleam in Rachel’s eyes, and he suddenly realizes that neither one of them is going to back down. Bass leans forward, extending his hand across the table for Rachel to shake. She reaches out her own hand, and Bass pulls his back a fraction.

“Wait.”

Rachel quirks an eyebrow. “Scared?”

“Nope,” Bass grins cheerily. “It’s just got to be an even bargain. You win; you get my shirt. I win…I get _yours_.”

Rachel frowns, and Miles thinks she’s finally going to say no. Instead, she says, “What about Miles?”

…the fuck?? How did _he_ get dragged into this? 

“Fine,” Bass is saying, exasperated. “You win, you can have both our shirts.”

“How about whoever wins gets both of the other players’ shirts?”

“I don’t want Miles’ shirt,” Bass grumbles. “I see him without his shirt all the time.”

Rachel’s eyes flick to Miles’ chest for a split second so short he thinks maybe he imagined it. “Fine. If _you_ win, you get _my_ shirt, _plus_ …” She pauses for dramatic effect. God, how did he not see this about her before? She’s just like Bass on steroids. “…the opportunity to choose our _next_ bet. No vetoes.”

“No vetoes?” Bass’s grin has slid from impish straight to evil.

Rachel nods, sticking her hand out again. “No vetoes.”

Bass shakes her hand, grins at Miles with a “lottery, bro!” look, and hands the cards to Rachel. She deals them out, and suddenly, Miles finds himself paying a _lot_ more attention to his hand. 

He’s holding a pair of threes, a King, an eight, and a five. He throws in the eight and the five, and draws two more useless cards. Dammit. He’s decent at bluffing, but since the only one he has a chance of fooling is Rachel, there’s a pretty good chance he’s still going to lose his shirt.

How the fuck did he get even get into this?

…

How the fuck had she gotten herself into this? It’s a rhetorical question; Rachel recalls exactly the sequence of events leading up to her sitting in Ben’s basement, playing a game of strip poker with Ben’s brother and his best friend. 

First, she’d had a knock-down, drag out with Ben over, ironically, Miles. He’d been complaining (again) about his brother’s “moronic adherence to an archaic notion of manhood” – by which he meant Miles’ career in the military – and Rachel had suggested, just _suggested_ , that maybe Miles had reasons for his life choices and that maybe Ben might get along with him more successfully if he learned to respect them.

That had apparently been the wrong button to press, because Ben had fired back with a nearly ten-minute rant that included phrases like: “Just because Dad was a drunk vet,” and “I have as much right as Miles,” and “halfway to being a textbook alcoholic” and the one that finally pushed Rachel’s buttons: “as if he couldn’t do anything better with his life than pull a trigger.”

“God, do you have to be so fucking judgmental all the time?” she’d asked. Ben knew her oldest cousin had been killed in action a year ago, and whether or not she’d agreed with his choice to go into the military, she’d supported and cried with his sisters, mother, and father all the same. At the moment, she can’t decide if it’s worse that Ben’s demeaning their family’s sacrifice or that maybe (probably) he doesn’t even remember her telling him the story.

There’d been more to the argument, but it had culminated in a lot of yelling and door slamming, and she’d gone home to her own damn apartment for once so she could scream and cry without Ben (or Bass or Miles) hearing her.

Then, three hours later, she’d floated back to Ben’s, with the intention of talking it out. In her hurry to leave earlier, she hadn’t taken her phone, and she was sure he’d be worried. 

But inside, her phone was on the kitchen counter where she’d left it, with no new messages. And Ben was fast asleep in bed.

And so, pissed and hurt and still a little shaky from three hours of crying, she’d knocked on the basement door, hoping to bum a beer she could take back to her apartment so she didn’t have to stop at a convenience store on the way home.

And then Bass had offered her a drink, and Miles had offered her a chair, and they were both just so goddamned friendly and grinning and _uncomplicated_ that she’d felt happy for the first time all day.

Of course, "uncomplicated" is turning out to be a relative term. Rachel stares at her cards, willing them to alter into a better set. Then she sees Miles glance at Bass, and Bass glance at Miles, and she realizes she doesn’t even have to look at her cards.

She just has to read Miles and Bass. Or, more accurately, she has to watch them read each other.

They finish trading out cards and Bass makes the first bet, glancing only fleetingly at Rachel, and then locking eyes with Miles. He grins. “Raise you ten.”

It’s Rachel’s bet next, so she goes with Bass’s read of Miles’ hand. “See your ten, and raise you twenty.” 

Miles swears a blue streak and then folds. Perfect. Of the two, Bass is the easier to read, by far. She peers at the blue eyes under the mop of shaggy curls and notes that his hair’s grown out fast over the last week. 

“Think you can scare me off that easy? Raise you another ten.” He’s still wearing that grin, and as he looks back down at his cards, Rachel sneaks a glance at Miles. Miles is downing the last of his bottle of beer, but as he rises, scraping his chair back with a resigned air, she catches his eye –

– and, almost imperceptibly, he shakes his head.

Rachel is suddenly flooded with a rush of emotion she doesn’t have time to sort out, because she has to: 

“Raise you another fifty…or, you know, what the heck? All in. You’re full of shit, Monroe.”

She waits three agonizing seconds…and then Bass makes a sound that’s somewhere between a laugh and a growl and throws down his cards. “King high,” he mutters, begrudgingly. 

Miles returns to the table with another beer just as Rachel lays her cards down neatly, one by one, so Bass can see that he’s been beaten. “Full House. Queens high,” she says briskly, retrieving her chips and stacking them in front of her. Then she leans back in her chair in as exaggeratedly relaxed of a position as she can manage. “Pay up.” 

Bass rolls his eyes and starts in on the buttons on his shirt. Miles is taking another swig from his new bottle when Rachel looks at him and says, “You too, Matheson.”

Miles looks a little betrayed, then mutters something she can’t hear, so she points at him again and wiggles one finger. “Shirt. Off.”

“Never shook on it,” he slurs, louder this time, but then he glances at Bass, who’s peeling off his button-up like he’s the entertainment at a bachelorette party, and sighs. “Whatever.”

He wrestles his gangly six-foot frame from the folding chair, grabs the bottom of his long-sleeve with crossed arms, and peels it up over his chest, leaning forward and tugging it off when it reaches the back of his head. Rachel’s stomach lurches unexpectedly, and she turns her eyes back to her cards as Miles ruffles a hand through his now-frizzy hair, trying to look away from all that lean expanse of tight, wiry muscle. 

But of course, her gaze drifts back unbidden. Damn it, it’s like the man has eye magnets in his pecs. Oh lord, she sounds like a horny seventeen-year-old. He’s got an old scar across his ribcage on the right side, and it’s when Rachel suddenly realizes that she’s thinking about how it would feel under her fingertips that she stands, abruptly, with the excuse of getting herself another beer.

When she comes back, Bass is actually making a gun show joke and flexing his biceps, and, although it’s ameliorated somewhat by the fact that he’s making an idiot of himself, she can’t really help but notice that he’s built like a goddamn calendar model. In her head, there’s a flash of Bass naked in a fireman’s hat, which has the effect of making her break out in hysterical, snorting laughter.

At this, _Miles_ actually snorts and speaks a longer-than-three-word sentence: “That the effect you were going for, Bass?”

Bass glares at him and sits back down. “Fine. See if I try to be a good loser again.”

Miles grins, relaxing a little, and throws his head back to finish off his beer. Rachel’s eyes travel from his corded shoulder muscles up his flexed arm, and then back to the hollow at the base of his throat before she can stop them. Her mouth is suddenly dry, so she takes a drink of her beer as Miles puts down his bottle and deals out the next hand.

“Hang on.” Bass holds out a hand to stall Miles’ dealing, then fixes his blue eyes on Rachel. “What’re we playing for now?” 

Rachel’s throat is beyond dry, but she fixes Bass with an equally competitive stare. “Pants. Obviously.”

There’s a groan from Miles, a grin from Bass, and then the soft _flit, flit, flit_ of cards hitting the table as Miles deals out the next hand.

Rachel takes a breath, and struggles to keep her eyes on her cards.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't want to make Butters cry (or incur the Wrath of Butters), so I've drawn this out to one more chapter. I mean, really - who doesn't want a little more time with Shirtless Miles? Also, I've really been rushing these updates, so shout out the typos if you see any!

 

It’s ten minutes into the game, and he’s already half-naked. Normally, Bass would be eating this up, but since the point of the game had been to get _Rachel_ naked, he’s less than thrilled with the outcome so far. On the plus side, Miles must also have a terrible hand, because he looks like he’s about to shit a brick.

Bass thumbs his cards, looks at Rachel’s widening grin – and caves. “Oh, fuck it. I’m out.” His only consolation is that Miles also folds – but hang on, who the hell folds when there’s only two in the game and pants are at stake? Well, whatever. At least it means they’ll be equally screwed. There’s a nice double entendre there, but as it relates to Ben’s girlfriend, Bass doesn’t think Miles will appreciate it. He sighs and reaches for his belt buckle.

…

Shit. He’s not nearly drunk enough for this. First of all, he’s thinking way too much. For instance, a second ago, he’d thought about what could happen if Rachel took her pants off in front of Bass, and the urge to avoid that potential shit-storm had caused him to throw his last hand. A moronic impulse, because now he has to take off _his_ pants. Yeah. He’s a fucking genius. 

Miles grabs another beer from the fridge and pops the top off on the edge of the fridge door, stalling the inevitable. Then he pounds the beer in one go, grabs another to take to the table, and plops down in his seat.

Bass already has his pants half off – and of course, the little shit is _enjoying_ this – and he and Rachel both look at Miles with the same expectant, blue-eyed, one-eyebrow-raised gazes.

Fuck. 

Fine. He tugs at his belt buckle until it loosens, the leather stiff under his fingers, then flips the buckle back against its belt loop and goes to work on the button of his jeans. His fine motor skills aren’t exactly fantastic right this second, and it takes him a minute, during which Bass slurs, “Need some help?” and Miles gives him the finger. Finally, he gets the damn thing undone, pulls the zip, leans back in his chair, and shoves the pants over his hips. It takes him another minute of half-hearted struggling, during which he almost knocks over the chair he’s sitting in, to kick the pants off his ankles.

“Happy?” he snaps at Bass, picking up his beer again. Is this number six now? Seven? Who knows? All he knows is that a second later, he’s immeasurably glad he’s slack-dick drunk, because Rachel’s eyes travel less-than-subtly over his ribs, down to the edge of his boxer shorts.

And it’s like she’s drawing a live wire across his skin everywhere her eyes light. 

Miles actually bites down on the neck of the beer bottle, taking a swig so he can wash back his grunt of surprise. Unfortunately, he’d have to be blackout-drunk not to notice the way Rachel’s pulse point jumps when he moves – God, he wants to trace the smooth skin of that throat with his tongue – 

Oh, _fuck_. Where the hell did that come from? Miles sets down the beer with a _thump_ and runs a hand through his hair, forcing a grin when Bass looks at him quizzically. Fun. They’re just having fun. And the only reason he’s even looking at Rachel is that he’s drunk, she’s here, and it’s been a year and four months – God, that’s depressing; he’s actually surprised Bass hasn’t been needling him about that more – since he’s had any.

He swallows and picks up his cards. Just play the game, Matheson.

…

Miles is acting a little off, and Bass is actually a little worried he might be drinking too much. He’s had like, eight beers in the last two hours, and he’d barely eaten at dinner, which isn’t like him – normally, it’s a race to see who can shovel their food down the fastest. Bass had chalked it up to him spending an uncharacteristic amount of time talking with Ben and Rachel – seriously, he hasn’t heard so many words come out of Miles’ mouth ever, at least not around people who weren’t Bass –  and probably that’s all it is – too much beer on an empty stomach – and he ought to just relax.

Of course, “relax” really isn’t on the menu when you’re mostly naked and trying not to lose a game of strip poker to a gorgeous blonde. Every time Rachel meets his eyes, Bass’s competitive side surges forward like she’s just insulted its mother and then mooned it out a car window.

So he pulls out all the stops, working her with his best smooth talking. He’s trying to get her to bet her shirt, pants, and bra against his boxers and socks, but first there’s a brief argument over whether each sock counts as a separate item, and then Rachel comes up with some absurd theory about relative value of items, and in the end, Rachel bets her pants and two socks against the remainder of Bass’s clothes. 

Okay, time to win a hand.

 …

Okay, time to win a hand. Apparently, it’s that or lose his boxers next, and Miles doesn’t think any number of beers will save him if he has to endure that look of Rachel's fully naked.

That doesn’t mean he isn’t drinking a beer anyway. But there’s no fucking way he’s losing again. 

Bass is busy screwing around, and he needs a distraction, so he adopts a matching ridiculous pose and waits for Bass to notice. At least it’ll stall the beginning of the next hand.

…

Rachel has entirely given up on keeping her eyes on her cards. Midway through her third beer, and right after Miles had fought his way, grumbling, out of his pants, she’d had the satisfying realization that since they’re doing this anyway, she might as well take the opportunity to enjoy it. After all, as far as she can tell, to Miles and Bass, she’s basically one of the guys. Sure, Bass flirts with her, but Ben and Miles have already thoroughly explained that Bass flirts with everything female and breathing, and even Ben just sighs patiently every time Bass lays another cheesy line on Rachel.

Miles is no more or less taciturn than he’s been all week, and he’s hard for her to read, but her best theory is that he’s more embarrassed over their awkward shower run-in than anything else and is feeling uncomfortable about a repeat performance. For her part, she decides that just means that anything she sees during this game is nothing that she hasn’t already (accidentally) seen before. 

She takes her time observing Bass’s six-pack and thickly muscled shoulders – he’s practically preening under the attention anyway – and holds back another bout of snorting laughter as she mentally puts him through the most ridiculous calendar poses she can imagine. She’s certain he’d be doing no less if it were her in her underwear. Probably worse. When Bass leans back from the table, lacing his hands behind his head, to give her a better view of his boxers – and then nearly tips his chair over – Rachel rolls her eyes and diverts her attention to Miles.

He’s leaned back too, right foot resting atop his left knee, elbows over the back of the chair, beer in hand. The posture stretches out his already lean frame, pulling the skin taut over his ribcage and revealing a layer of hard-packed muscle underneath. He’s not looking at her, so she takes her time, letting her eyes roam over his chest, his hard-muscled thighs, over the dip between Miles’ skinny hipbone and the grey elastic waistband of his boxers (grey on black; it’s a nice look on him)…heat rises in her gut, and with a guilty start, she realizes she’s full-on ogling Ben’s brother.

And she doesn’t want to stop.

Thankfully, Miles himself provides a distraction, because the next thing is says is, “See? Balance, Bass. This is why Gail wouldn’t put you into ballet.” His face twists into a snarky smiles as he slams his chair back down triumphantly onto all four legs and rises to get another beer, and Rachel realizes that he’d only adopted that ridiculous posture to make fun of his best friend’s showboating.

She has to try – hard – not to look at his ass as he walks away. Fuck. Is she actually _attracted_ to _Miles_? Her psychologist friends would probably tell her she’s temporarily displacing her attraction to Ben onto his little brother, in an effort to stimulate jealousy and thereby achieve greater attentiveness on Ben’s part. 

Miles gets back from the fridge a second later. He’s holding a second new bottle of beer by the neck, and before he sits down, he reaches out a hand and points the second bottle at her. She takes it, fingers wrapping around the cool glass bottle and then connecting with his with a force akin to an electric shock. Suddenly, Rachel’s pulse is pounding in her ears and her legs have turned to warm jelly. 

...Her psychologist friends are full of shit.

When they finally get around to playing the hand that Bass just dealt, both Miles and Bass play with a sort of desperate intensity. She has a hard time telling which one has worse cards this time (she’s only holding a pair of fours) and this time, she’s not getting any hints from Miles. In fact, he’s carefully avoiding her eyes.

In the end, no one folds, and when they throw down, Miles has won with a pair of nines. Bass shouts, “Dammit! Fuck, man!” and stands fast enough to knock his chair over. He reaches for his boxers, and Rachel’s actually laughing along with Miles until she remembers that she has also lost.

Well, then. Fair’s fair. She pulls off her socks, one by one, and manages to irritate the hell out of Bass by ignoring the fact that he’s just dropped his boxers and instead pointing to the socks he’s still wearing. “Doesn’t look like you’re paid in full yet, Monroe.” Bass snarls a quiet “Fuck you” and plops his naked butt back into his chair to pull off his socks, flinging them onto the floor in front of him.

It turns out that Bass is either drunk enough, in a foul enough mood from losing, or cold enough now that he’s fully naked that he doesn’t even stick around to watch Rachel take off her pants. She thinks she catches a soft chuckle from Miles as Bass stomps off to his couch, wraps himself with a blanket, and (to all appearances) falls immediately asleep.

“Don’t worry about it,” mumbles Miles, scratching his fingers through his hair. “He’s always a sore loser. He’ll be all right in the morning.” He shoves the cards to the middle of the table and starts to stand, and a second later, Rachel wants to beat her competitive side into unconsciousness, because she says,

“Bailing out before you lose? I didn't think Miles Matheson quit.”

…

Maybe it’s the way his name rolls off Rachel’s tongue that overwhelms all of Miles’ better judgment. It’s like each syllable triggers a set of nerve endings until his whole body is singing with the sound.

Apparently, those nerve endings also route straight to his brain and turn it off.

He freezes, turning slowly to face Rachel (down at the table; not at her eyes), and hears himself say, “Well, I didn’t see you pay up for last round.” He tries to keep his voice normal, but it’s suddenly taken on a low, gravelly note that he can’t quite keep out.

And then Rachel stands, shaking out her long hair behind her. She turns her back to him, her cheeks flush with embarrassment. She unbuttons her pants, and a second later, they’re around her ankles, and she’s stepping out of them, mile-long legs and thin, blue cotton underwear with little white flowers, and Miles’ breath hitches and suddenly he can’t speak at all.

Rachel leaves the pants pooled on the floor and drifts back to the table, picking up the cards to deal the next hand. She quirks an imperious, questioning eyebrow at him. Oh. Right. He has to set the bet. Somehow, he finds his cracked voice and forces it through a short sentence: “My socks, your shirt.”

Rachel raises the eyebrow even higher. One blonde curl falls in front of her face, gold against her flushed cheek, and Miles’ stupid heart starts pounding blood everywhere he doesn’t need it. “No way. Your boxers, my bra.”

“Cheating.” He’s down to managing monosyllabic answers right now, but he’s pretty damn proud he can still do that. “Top layers first. Rules.”

“What rules? Did _Bass_ invent these rules?” Rachel rolls her eyes. “Fine. Compromise: your socks for my bra, and if you win, I’ll double-down next hand. Give you a chance to make up your losses.”

Miles grunts, and motions for her to deal. 

At this point, he’s losing either way.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am too exhausted from wrestling with this chapter to Beta it, so I'm just blindly hoping it's okay. I almost abandoned this ending three times, and I rewrote it something like seven times (all of them completely different, and all of them not quite true to Miles and Rachel), and apparently, this is the only ending I could live with. I hope you can all live with it too. ;-)
> 
> lol. With that, enjoy!

It’s forty-five fucking degrees in Ben’s basement, and Miles thinks he might actually be sweating. He’d won the last hand, actually, and managed to keep his socks (not a huge victory, but he’ll take anything at this point), resulting in a jaw-droppingly impressive bra-removing display by Rachel, wherein she’d shimmied out of the thing like a goddamned Houdini protégé without remotely displacing her shirt. 

Of course, divested of her bra, in a cold basement, her blouse isn’t exactly leaving much to the imagination, her rounded nipples clearly outlined against the tight fabric with each rise of her chest. Miles had actually had to scoot his chair closer to the table (with the excuse of not being able to reach his beer) to hide his rapidly growing boner (in another situation, he would have bragged to Bass about being able to get it up at all while eight beers in and freezing his ass off; unfortunately, right now, he’s more mortified than proud).

He wrestles his attention back to the cards Rachel had dealt him, and wonders if she’s cheating. A King, a seven, a four, a three, and a six. Basically, a whole bunch of useless red cards. He rearranges them, pointlessly, only half paying attention, and wonders if he should just dump the King and just hope like hell he draws a five. 

Next to him, Rachel shifts in her chair, moving to tuck her right leg under her body. She’s probably (obviously) cold. He could offer her a blanket ( _wrap her in his and slip underneath_ , _pressing her to the couch –_ he swallows; redirects his eyes and his line of thought), but she’s probably too competitive to accept one anyway. No blankets. 

Rachel leans forward to pick up her cards, and her blouse rides up, exposing a generous curve of pale hipbone. Miles chokes back a groan – an actual groan – as his eyes carve a path from those fuck-me-now panties around her backside and up that perfectly-curved hip. Oh, holy hell. Either she’s going to hear his goddamned heart hammering, or he’s going to pass out from lack of oxygen.

His cards are actually blurring in front of his eyes, though whether that’s the alcohol or the fact that they won’t focus on anything but Rachel’s ass, he can’t really tell. Well, he’d offered her the opportunity to walk away, and she hadn’t, so now they’re going to see this thing through to its conclusion.

He tosses the King in the pile and reaches for another card. And you know what? Fuck it. He’s shit-faced drunk, mostly naked, and playing poker with a pretty girl, and he’s so wound in mental circles about it that he’s not even having fun. Bass would be – well, the things Bass would be doing right now are practically unspeakable, even for him, but the point is that at least Bass would be having a good time. 

And the worst part is, Miles _knows_ how to have a good time with Rachel. Hell, he’s been practicing all week, albeit with other people around – board games, card games, cutting up dinner vegetables in the kitchen (where she’d joked about he and Bass being “scary good” with the knives), outings to the movies and (once) ice skating, which Ben had hated, Rachel had loved, and Bass would probably never forgive him for – and if he could just put aside the fact that _she’s Ben’s goddamned girlfriend_ for a second, he might actually be able to just relax and enjoy her company.

So, without overthinking it, he cracks a smile and says, “You playing or stalling, Rache?”

And if he weren’t finally trying to have a good time, he’d probably worry about how easily that nickname rolls off his tongue.

…

Rachel Matheson has possibly never been quite this drunk. Despite sitting about four feet over from her, Miles is blurring a little whenever she looks at him. Of course, it’s not just Miles – it’s also the table, her cards, the beer bottle in front of her – that’s only her fourth, right? – the refrigerator on the other side of the room – maybe she should get another beer, just to prove her hypothesis – and also those…um…. 

…the fact that she’s searching for the word “couches” should really concern her. Really. Except that it’s so damn _funny_. She’s a teeny tiny micrometer from shaking with uncontrollable laughter when Miles clears his throat and swings his eyes from his cards to her face.

“You playing or stalling, Rache?”

Rachel’s stomach lurches upward and wraps around her heart, which is suddenly pounding so hard she can feel it in the base of her brain. Her fingers tingle in fuzzy pinpricks against the cards as Miles’ voice reverberates in her chest.

_Rache._

It’s just her name, minus one syllable.

So why has it suddenly become of such paramount importance that she hear it again? 

She pushes a stray strand of hair back from her face and comes up with some witty banter so she won’t have to think about the answer to that question. “Neither,” she manages, forcing a slow smile across her lips. “I’m _winning_.”

Miles actually laughs – a short bark she’s heard him give when Bass says something particularly biting – and a real smile suddenly stages a takeover of Rachel’s face. She checks her cards – they’re abysmal: two fours, a seven, a three, and a six – and, on an uncharacteristically-followed whim, throws away everything but the two fours and reaches out to draw three new cards. 

Miles’ eyes track her reach, and she looks up, intending to try to read in his face whether he’s drawn a better hand –

 – and then realizes her mistake when her eyes meet his. 

Ben had once taken her caving, not because he was adventurous – he wasn’t – but because his grandmother had been the geologist who’d discovered this particular cave, and Ben had a high value for family history. (At least, that had been his stated reason; Rachel had suspected at the time that it had more to do with trying to impress her.) But Miles’ eyes remind her of that caving trip: tiny lights in a darkness of uncertain depth and composition – as if the totality of his soul is trying to climb its way out of an opening too small to admit its passage.

Rachel wants to reach out her hand, and pull him out.

…but she might just as easily get pulled in.

So instead, she schools her look deliberately downward, swallowing back a sudden lump in her throat and trying to focus on her cards and not… _Miles_.

And that’s when she realizes that, in addition to her two fours, she’s drawn three fives.

Full house.

Somewhere, Ben’s reasonable voice tells her to end the game quickly and retreat upstairs – or maybe even back to her own apartment – before things really get out of hand.

“So, Matheson,” she hears herself say, placing her cards facedown on the table for a moment and reaching for her beer, “It’s getting pretty late. Sure you don’t want to just concede this hand?”

There’s a flicker in Miles’ eyes, but she can’t read it, and, in the equivalent of a vocal shrug, he grunts, “Nope.” Dammit. She is never playing poker with this Matheson again. Ben sucks at poker – oh dear, apparently all this beer is reducing her vocabulary to middle-school level. Speaking of which, her bottle is empty again. 

Without really thinking about it, she reaches all the way across the table for Miles’ beer bottle. Her hand touches glass, and his closes around her wrist. And just like the last time he caught her by the wrist, she’s not unpleasantly startled by how strong Miles actually is. He drags her around to his side of the table with almost no effort, and suddenly, she’s practically in his lap, close enough that she can smell the faint cinnamon of his aftershave and another scent, like green grass and warm dirt and pine needles, underneath it.

He stares into her eyes with a half-feral grin and growls, “ _Mine_.” 

_YES._

No! And oh my God, he’s talking about the _beer_.

She tries to backpedal, because this is actually dangerous – too close, and that cinnamon-grass smell is causing misfires in half the neurons in her brain and she really needs to back up before she –

– and then Miles senses her pulling back and lets go at just the wrong moment. Rachel flails an arm backward to catch her balance and smacks her elbow into the edge of the card table hard enough to topple it, and there are a few desperate seconds of scrambling and steadying and grabbing cards and beer bottles before they’ve got everything (mostly) righted again.

They both straighten and face each other at, awkwardly, the same moment. “Well, shit,” Miles mumbles, running a hand through his hair, but starting to chuckle.

And then Rachel just bursts into tears.

It hits her so unexpectedly, and maybe it’s the four beers or the late night or the sudden shock of pain, or something else entirely, but Miles’ laugh breaks something in her chest, and suddenly, she’s sobbing – a wash of emotion, everything mixed up together: Ben’s indifference and disregard, the biting pain in her elbow, her cousin in the military and now Miles and Bass, and how long before one of _them_ comes home in a body bag? – and she realizes in the midst of all this (a look at his face confirms it) that Miles must think she’s absolutely lost it, and she’s about to just turn and flee upstairs when he suddenly folds her into his arms.

And if she could stop crying long enough to tell him so, she might admit that it feels almost right.

…

Miles has never been more at sea in his life. Rachel sobs against his chest, golden hair draped over his biceps, shivering (with crying? cold?) in his arms. He’d get her a blanket, but some sixth sense warns him that if he moves now, she’ll really lose it. He can’t really explain what’s going on here to _himself_ , let alone to Bass – or, holy hell, _Ben_ – if she wakes one of them. So he keeps his mouth shut and his arms in place and just lets her cry.

Eventually, her sobs fade to sniffles, little hitches of breath against his bare chest, and he only realizes how tightly he’s holding her – and how little he wants to let go – when Rachel raises her head to wipe her eyes and has to push against his arms a little to get enough room to move her hand.

“’m’Sorry,” she whispers, a waver in her voice that sounds like if it tipped the wrong way, she’d go off on another round of sobbing. Miles just shakes his head – she can’t see it, trapped that close to his chest, but he figures she can feel it since his chin’s basically resting on top of her head. He takes a breath, inhaling the scent of Rachel’s hair – lavender and something that reminds him of warm summer nights in the woods – then tips his head toward her ear and murmurs,

“You were sad when you came in tonight.”

She goes still, and for a moment, he thinks he’s said the wrong thing, but then her hair tickles his skin as she nods. “Yeah,” she breathes. “It’s just…been a long night." 

She pulls back then, leaving a cold spot on his chest as he reluctantly opens his arms. As she steps away, pushing her hair back from her face and straightening her blouse self-consciously, she lets out a strangled little chuckle. “I guess I need to work on my poker face.”

Miles looks down at his lamentable state of undress, then shoots Rachel a deadpan look. “Yeah, please don’t.”

And then she finally does burst out laughing, cheeks still red with tear tracks, and Miles comes a terrifying hairsbreadth from crossing the distance between them, tangling his fingers in her cornsilk hair, and kissing her within an inch of her life. He actually twitches forward a half-step…

…then remembers he’s leaving in two days.

For Iraq. 

It’s his experience that women don’t really like to stick around waiting for the guy who might or might not come back alive, and he suspects that goes doubly for women who are already _other people’s girlfriends._

So he just stands there for a second, watching the way Rachel’s perfect cheekbones stand out when she laughs, and then goes to get another goddamned beer.

…

They flop back down into the rickety card table chairs a second later, and Miles spends a few moments carefully extricating his hand from the pile of scattered cards on the table. Rachel raises a suspicious eyebrow. “I hope you’re not cheating to win over there, Miles.” Honestly, she’s just hoping a little banter will divert attention from how embarrassed she is over her momentary emotional breakdown. Her cheeks still feel like someone injected them with little nanotech space heaters, and it’s hard to tell if she feels warm all over because of that, or from the aftereffects of being in Miles’ arms. Or maybe it just had something to do with finally feeling all those overlapped layers of lean, solid muscle.

And is it terrible that two minutes ago, she’d been bawling into his chest, and now, she’s thinking about how he’d feel between her legs? God, she’s awful right now. She would actually launch herself across the table into Miles’ lap if she could read the slightest goddamn hint that he’d reciprocate.

It should bother her more that the only thing keeping her from cheating on her boyfriend with his little brother is the little brother’s obvious indifference. But the way he’d just walked away to grab a beer after basically cradling her in his arms for five minutes had been a pretty clear statement of disinterest.

Miles is waving something in her face, and she snaps out of her reverie to focus. He’s holding up his cards, backs-first. “Five cards.” He mimes pulling out an invisible sleeve. “No aces in here. Besides,” he continues, gaze drifting off in the direction of the refrigerator, “didn’t your mom ever teach you that cheaters are losers?”

Rachel suppresses a wince. Her mother had ascribed to the “by any means necessary” philosophy, but she’s already looked emotionally fragile enough for one night, and it’s not as if Miles needs (or wants) to know that.

Instead, she raises her own hand of five, backs-first, to Miles, like the two of them are about to face off in some sort of bizarre fan-fencing competition. “Ready?”

Miles lets out a sound somewhere between a groan and a sigh. “You first.”

“Full house.” Rachel flips her hand with a flourish, dropping it to the table with a triumphant smirk. “Beat that, Matheson." 

Miles raises an eyebrow, lays his hand face-down on the table…and turns over just the first card.

A three of hearts.

Rachel gives him her best “so what?” look.

And Miles turns over the next card. Four of hearts.

Oh shit.

With a smirk that would rival Bass’s best, he moves to the other side of his hand and turns over the leftmost card. Seven of hearts.

Rachel’s vision has gradually narrowed to encompass only the eight-square-inch section of the table containing Miles’ cards. 

He can’t have the five. He _can’t_. She has the other three fives in her hand. The odds are _astronomical._ Odds are, he doesn’t even have the six…

With a soft _tap_ that goes off like a canon shot in Rachel’s ears, Miles flips the fourth card.

Six of hearts. _Fuck._

But if he wins…then maybe they _both_ win. Visions of stripping off her shirt and panties in a manner so seductive that even Miles can’t ignore it parade through Rachel’s mind. Suddenly, her stomach starts crawling in tiny, terrified circles and trying to escape out her ribcage. 

Because if Miles wins this hand, she’s totally going to jump his bones. 

She glances at his eyes for just a second, trying to read the outcome of the next card flip there, and he’s giving her the oddest look – and she freezes, caught staring at those tiny lights in the darkness while Miles, without breaking eye contact, turns over the last card.

She misses three heartbeats in the time it takes to realize that it’s the two of clubs.

Miles snorts out a laugh and shakes his head, picking up his beer for the last swallow. “Just thought I’d give you a little suspense, there. Retaliation for crying all over my…” He looks down like he was going to say “shirt,” and finishes, “…boxers.”

“Oh, and speaking of which…” He rises, unfolding his long limbs from the chair, and, with no further warning and no hesitation, tugs his boxer shorts over his hips, down past his knees, and drops them to the floor.

And if Rachel’s cheeks were burning before, they’re _on fire_ now. But he’s just standing there, hands on his hips like he’s posing for a goddamned calendar, wry grin plastered across his face.

Bizarrely, she’s reminded of the first time her father took her to a real art museum (at the age of twelve), and she’d been transfixed by a replica of Michelangelo’s David. Her appreciation of Miles’ body goes beyond sexual, into the realm of her feelings about beauty itself. Because Miles _is_ beautiful – from the lean-muscled thighs to the dark curling hair outlining a _masterpiece_ of perfectly formed equipment to the wiry torso (oh God, those pecs) and the steel-corded shoulder muscles…

Miles clears his throat, and Rachel actually jumps guiltily. There’s a well-disguised edge to his casual tone as he raises an eyebrow and asks, “Had enough?”

 _No_. But apparently, she still has enough remaining embarrassment to blush and look down at their clothes scattered all over the floor. Miles follows her gaze, and his eyes light on something half-slipped out of the pocket of her pants.

It’s her cell phone. 

And it’s blinking.

“Somebody wants you.” Again, that casual tone – flat and impossible to read. He picks up the phone and tosses it to her and she just barely fumbles it into her hands without dropping it again. 

“It’s Ben,” she says, and doesn’t know why she’s saying it out loud. Who else would call her at quarter-to-three in the morning?

“Better go,” Miles says, turning to reach for his boxers. Again, that casual tone, but this time a bit shorter, a little clipped.

“Miles…” He’s midway through tugging on his boxers, back to her, and there’s just a millisecond pause when she speaks before he resumes motion, pulling on the boxers and reaching for his pants.

Pants back in place, he turns to her, and maybe it’s just her imagination that his usual smirking smile looks a little soft around the edges. “Hey, good game, Rache.” He ruffles her hair like she’s six years old and gives her a playful shove toward the stairs. “Now get the hell out of my basement before you miss your booty call.”

So, bewildered (and something else she won’t – can’t? – name), she does, gathering up her clothes in a fog and padding barefoot up the stairs to the ground floor bathroom. 

As the basement door clicks shut behind her, she suddenly realizes that she’s never wished so fucking much that she’d lost a game.

Goddamned full house.

… 

 _Epilogue_  

_Six years after the Blackout…_

Miles wakes in total darkness – it’s either about three in the morning or the snow has covered their tent and they’re about to die a slow death of asphyxiation – and swears softly when he realizes he can’t feel his feet. Sometime in the last four hours, the fire in their tent has burned down to nothing, and as much as he fucking does _not_ want to get out from under his blankets, freezing to death is an even less appealing prospect.

Plus, he’s actually too damn cold to get a hard-on, and it’s going to be fucking torture laying here thinking about Rachel without a little relief.

Muttering a string of mostly silent curses, Miles shucks his blankets, steps over Bass, and stumbles numb-footed in the dark to the corner of the tent, where the Minnesota kid – and he’s going to have to learn his name, hopefully before he has to use it at a burial – has stacked a few logs of extra firewood. Miles had insisted firewood (and other necessities) be divvied out equally among themselves and each of the men, but Jeremy had pointed out their need for fine motor control in mapping and Bass had pointed out that Miles would be a less capable leader (though the phrase he’d used was “insufferable asshole”) with frostbite, and in the end, they’d won 2-1, and the officers’ tent always ended up with an extra load of firewood.

Miles stacks the logs on last night’s embers with the usual twinge of guilt and blows on the coals till the wood starts to catch. It’ll actually be colder under his damp blankets until the tent starts to warm, so he pulls his belt and swords from his bedroll and sits on top of the blankets, drawing the longer blade and holding it up to the firelight.

He’d proven to be good with swords – _very_ good – and though the Militia has already been using them for a little under a year, the swords are still new enough to fascinate him. That flashing glint of light off metal might never get old.

The brass knuckles had been Jeremy’s idea – he’d proved a quick study at hand-to-hand combat back in the day, and Miles suspects he’d just been concerned about losing his one advantage – but they gave an archaic weapon a more modern look that helped reassure some of the more hesitant of the men that the Militia could actually win battles with these things.

And win they had. The Militia hadn’t had a major loss since Trenton, their borders were finally starting to coalesce into something solid, and, for the first time in six years, Miles was starting to actually sleep at night.

He twirls the sword back into its sheath, and hesitates as his hand starts to leave the hilt. A quick eye shift assures that Bass and Jeremy are still passed out in their bedrolls, so Miles sighs, giving in to the inevitable, and twists the little cap he’d had built into the end of the hilt. The cap drops into his palm with a light tap, and he pockets it, then digs one fingernail into the tiny hidden compartment cut from beside the tang and slides out a yellowed, folded piece of paper with a familiar blue paisley design tattooed onto the back.

Miles runs a hand through his tangled hair, sets the sword carefully on the ground, and unfolds the five of hearts.

An hour later, when the fire has warmed the tent, and he finally re-caps the sword and retreats back underneath his blankets, Miles still hasn’t come to grips with how different the world would be if he’d just played the damn cards he was dealt.


End file.
